Gendering Culture in Greater Syria

Intellectuals and Ideology in the Late Ottoman Period

Fruma Zachs, Sharon Halevi

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781780769363
• eBook ISBN: 9780857736727
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: Social Sciences

The Nahda (lit. 'the Awakening') was one of the most significant cultural movements in modern Arab history. By focusing on the neglected role of women in the intellectual Islamic renaissance of the late Ottoman Period, Fruma Zachs and Sharon Halevi provide a refreshingly interdisciplinary exploration of gender and culture in the Arab World. Focusing mainly on Greater Syria, this book re-examines the cultural by-products of the Nahda - such as scientific debates, journal articles, essays, short stories and novels - and provides a new framework for rethinking the dynamics of cultural and social change in what today we know as Syria and Lebanon. The lasting impact of the Nahda is given an innovative and thoroughly unique interpretation, providing an indispensable perspective to studying the nuanced roles of the construction and development of gender ideologies in the nineteenth century Middle East. The authors explore contemporary ideas concerning modern gender roles in the Middle East, and the extent to which these emerged in nineteenth-century Greater Syria. How were these ideas incorporated into daily lives, consumer patterns and cultural activities?
Was class a determining factor in the creation of gender relations in the Muslim world? How were the subjectivities of gender moulded and articulated in fictional and non-fictional texts? The authors delineate both the evolution of a discourse on gender as well the "real-life" activities of men and women as writers, readers and participants in philanthropic and cultural societies, literary salons and educational enterprises. This book reemphasizes the position of the Nahda in the worlds of Damascus, Aleppo and Beirut as an innovative, deeply influential, and significant socio-cultural and political movement in its own right, which played a major role in shaping modern Arab culture, worldviews and self-perception. Zachs and Halevi here provide a new framework for rethinking the dynamics of cultural and social change, and present a groundbreaking new interpretation of the cumulative impact of the Nahda on gender perception in the late Ottoman Period.

CHAPTER 1

FROM DIFA‘ AL-NISA’
TO MAS’ALAT AL-NISA’ IN
GREATER SYRIA: READERS
AND WRITERS DEBATE WOMEN
AND THEIR RIGHTS, 1858–1900

In July 1858 Hadiqat al-Akhbar (The Garden of News) published the following anecdote, entitled “The New Telegraph”:

If you want to transmit information quickly from one place to another, you should tell it to a woman and you will see that within a short time the message will pass from one place to another faster than the blink of an eye.¹

Hadiqat al-Akhbar, edited and published (bi-weekly) by Khalil al-Khuri (1836–1907), was the first journal privately published in Beirut. The publication was quite successful early on, and within the first three months acquired 400 subscribers, and spanning over 50 years (1858–1911) some 3,000 issues were published. The journal content varied; it focused heavily on regional news, especially commercial and economic news from Beirut, but also carried news and commentary on foreign events, official Ottoman announcements, advertisements and reviews of new books, serialized original novels, as well as excerpts and translations of short stories and novels. Occasionally it also printed witticisms, epigrams, and humorous anecdotes such as the one above; the journal’s women readers, however, failed to see the humor.²

“We expected pleasant perfumes from the flowers of this garden (hadiqa) but today we smelled offensive and insulting odors”; began the letter of an unnamed group of women from Tripoli addressed to the women of Beirut in which they protested about this anecdote.³ The irate women of Tripoli were not only angered by its underlying misogyny, but were upset that their Beiruti counterparts did not rise up in defense of their sex. In their circulated letter they were not only furious at al-Khuri, who printed this item depicting all women as foolish, flighty, and indiscreet, but claimed that if women did not counter it they would in effect be conceding its truth: “What was printed is a common and ill-mannered accusation which cannot be accepted by the press, you have insulted our honor and we demand satisfaction.”⁴ The ensuing public outcry (or at least the female one) was evidently quite considerable, and al-Khuri felt duty-bound to reprint this letter in the following issue and make amends to his female readers. This brief exchange is the earliest known example in the Arabic press of a debate (known in Europe as the “querelle des femmes”) in which women opposed men’s unfavorable views of them and emphasized the cultural, rather than just the biological, aspect of gender.⁵

From the mid-nineteenth century onward these arguments in “defense of women” (Difa‘ al-Nisa’) would soon escalate into a full-fledged debate on the “question of women” (Mas’alat al-Nisa’). Throughout Greater Syria, in public lectures, letters, newspaper articles, journal essays and/or prose fiction, men and women heatedly discussed the role of the “modern woman,” her contributions to her family and society, the education she should receive and even her political rights. The “woman question” was a core issue in the Arab–Western cultural encounter and renegotiation during the Nahda period; yet while it extended to both these facets of the Nahda, its early years have not attracted much scholarly attention.

In this chapter we present a threefold argument, chronological, geographical, and sociocultural, in order to demonstrate that interest in the “woman question” and the lively and at times charged debate that it stimulated began in Greater Syria in the early Nahda period and persisted throughout, drawing into its orbit leading intellectuals as well as members of the general public and permeating even into the peripheral areas of Greater Syria. We do so by examining the public reflection of this debate in the early Nahda press, mainly the privately published Beirut journals and newspapers.⁶

Concomitant with the growing interest in women’s history, several studies over the past 20 years have considered various aspects of Arab women’s lives, the debate on women’s political rights, and the significant roles of gender in national discourse and national movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.⁷ While scholars are aware of the ongoing debate throughout the first half of the nineteenth century concerning women, their rights and roles, and its importance in shaping the parameters and terms of later discussions, the majority have focused on the turn-of-the-century and on Egypt as a case study.⁸ Dagmar Glass’ and Fruma Zachs’s studies are focused on more general intellectual and cultural developments, whereas Marilyn Booth’s exhaustive analysis of women’s life-writing in the period does not deal primarily with the evolving public debate between readers and writers.⁹ The relative inattention to the early phases of this debate, especially in Greater Syria, has led at least one scholar to state unequivocally that “before the 1890s […] we have no record of women making any public speeches or demanding a greater role for women within society.”¹⁰

To re-envision this early period and the debate concerning women, we examine the years between 1858 and 1900. During these years, early thinkers (both male and female) and their readers first turned their attention to an array of gender issues and re-cast the relationships between men and women as an intrinsic part of their overall scheme of social and political regeneration. The early stage of the debate on women and their rights, which culminated in Qasim Amin’s Tahrir al-Mar’a (Liberation of Woman, 1898) and al-Mar’a al-Jadida (The New Woman, 1900), evolved throughout the nineteenth century in spurts and bursts, and women played an important role in framing it. This does not deny the importance of Qasim Amin and his oeuvres but rather broadens the unequivocal claim by earlier scholars that without Qasim Amin, “The nineteenth century might have ended without the issue of women’s emancipation becoming a public concern.”¹¹

From a geographical perspective, we emphasize that these issues first came to the fore in Greater Syria. Many of the pioneers of Arab journalism hailed from this region and they dominated the field until the early twentieth century. Greater Syria, and in particular Beirut, its economic and cultural center, was a hub of growing intellectual ferment in the latter half of the nineteenth century, as seen in the growing numbers of bookstores and printing presses, literary salons and scientific societies.¹² Only following the repressive measures of the Hamidian regime (1876–1908) was the debate relocated to Egypt, where exiled Syrian intellectuals, writers and journalists were joined by their Egyptian counterparts.

In this chapter we sketch the sociocultural contours of the dialogue on women developing between the writers and readers of newspapers, and point out its major themes and sources of influence; we emphasize the modes and directions of the diffusion of ideas. The diffusion of ideas is an interactive process: as ideas percolate through a society they are constantly renegotiated and rearticulated. Dominick LaCapra argued that ideas are created not solely by individual authors but also by “communities of discourse,” made up of authors, readers, commentators, and critics who over time discuss, revise, and expand on ideas.¹³ Our study clearly demonstrates that this dialogue was carried out both within each newspaper, and between the newspapers and their readers, establishing that a lively and active community of discourse debated gender issues, considered their implications and suggested new courses of action. The debate on women’s issues permeated well into the middle classes; both men and women were conversant with its terms, and it did not only involve the leading intellectuals but a broad cross-section of readers. It was not limited solely to Beirut but seeped into the peripheral areas of Greater Syria. The impact of this dialogue reverberated for years after, as issues of these periodicals continued to be read long after their publication. Readers were known to have saved the bound annual volumes, making them part of their library collections. They referred to them and lent them out to friends for perusal and entertainment.¹⁴

Our argument in this chapter is based on an analysis of six leading journals and newspapers of the period between 1858 and 1900: Hadiqat al-Akhbar (Beirut: 1858–68, 1881–8), al-Jinan (Beirut: 1870–86), al-Muqtataf (Beirut: 1876–84; Cairo: 1885–1900), Thamarat al-Funun (Beirut: 1875–1900), Lisan al-Hal (Beirut: 1877–1900) and al-Hilal (Cairo: 1892–1900).¹⁵ It focuses mainly on articles, editorials, regular columns, “op-ed items,” and letters to the editor that provide a broad outline of the debate on women and highlight certain critical junctures.¹⁶ It provides a more complete sense of the richness, coherence and continuity of the debate that developed during the early Nahda period in Greater Syria and continued later in Egypt well into the twentieth century. We unfold this chapter in chronological order to demonstrate how arguments were articulated and reformulated. We close by considering the ramifications of the debate on women, demonstrate that the Nahda was a socio-cultural phenomenon, not just a cultural and literary one, and highlight the importance of the study of the place of women in modern Arab societies.

“To Demand Satisfaction for Insulting Our Honor”: The Early Years of the Debate on Women

The furious exchange between the women readers of Hadiqat al-Akhbar and its editor, Khalil al-Khuri, raises a host of questions: who were the women of Tripoli who wrote the letter and who were the women of Beirut to whom they addressed their letter? Were they members of an organized society (literary or other) or a group of women who met to discuss the journal? How large was Hadiqat al-Akhbar’s female readership? Were the women among its subscribers or did they come across it in the privacy of their homes? Although the precise identification of the journal’s readership and the two women’s societies eludes us, it is known that several such societies were active in this period. For example, in 1847 Akhawat al-Mahabba, a women’s charitable society, built a school, a hospital, and a sanitarium as well as a hostel for wayward girls. In 1853, a Maronite women’s society was founded in Bikfayya and in 1857 a women’s charitable society, Sayyidat al-Mahabba, was established in Beirut, as was a Jesuit-backed women’s educational society in Zahle.¹⁷ Early women graduates of the missionary schools such as Rahil (‘Ata) al-Bustani (1823–94) and the daughters of prominent families who were educated privately at home, such as author Angelina Nawfal (d. 1865; mother of the leading Nahda intellectual Niqula Nawfal), were avid readers of a variety of texts. It is more than likely that women such as these were among the readers of the early journals and newspapers.¹⁸

The interest in women and their education was shared by men’s cultural societies, which held several debates pertaining to them. For example, in January 1849, Butrus al-Bustani (founder of al-Jinan and father of author Salim al-Bustani) who had a keen interest in women’s issues and had long supported the cause of women’s education, addressed a meeting of the Syrian Society for the Acquisition of Sciences (al-Jam‘iyya al-Suriyya li-Iktisab al-‘Ulum wal-Funun) concerning this issue. The society, which included leading members of the Beiruti intelligentsia such as Mikha’il Mishaqa (1800–88), Nasif al-Yaziji (1800–71) and al-Bustani, often discussed matters pertaining to the progress of Arab society, and the members’ wives often participated in these cultural events and educational activities.¹⁹ In al-Bustani’s lecture On the Education of Woman, he advocated providing women with a broad and solid education to enable them to fulfill their marital, maternal, and domestic duties for the benefit of their family, society and nation.²⁰ Another author associated with al-Bustani’s group, As‘ad Ya‘qub al-Khayyat (b. 1811), also argued in favor of the liberation of women (tahrir al-mar’a) and stressed the need for their education in his 1847 travelogue Sawt min-Lubnan (Voice from Lebanon).²¹ These two examples suggest that such ideas were circulating in Beiruti society for several years (at the very least) before being expressed publically in speeches and the media.

Evidently by 1858 the segment of female readership was significant enough for al-Khuri to address their very overt challenge and to disown authorship of the anecdote, claiming that he only reprinted it from an English newspaper. Al-Khuri acknowledged that considerable pressure was exerted on the editorial staff regarding this item and may have felt the need to set the record straight. He therefore published the letter from the women of Tripoli.²² Al-Khuri, who was committed to the cause of female education, recognized the importance of his female readers in later issues and many of his editorial choices were taken with them in mind. For example he published translations of the works of popular French authors that dealt with women and works written by women. These included novels by Fanny Reybaud (1802–70), such as Mademoiselle de Malepeire (1855), which recounts the sensationalist tale of a young bourgeois woman disinherited by her family after her marriage to a farmer who she eventually murders, and Gabrielle Anne Cisterne de Courtiras, Vicomtesse de Saint-Mars (“Countess Dash,” 1804–72), a member of Alexandre Dumas fils’ circle and the author of several best-selling historical romances and works concerning women such as Le livre des femmes (1864), a witty guide to marriage. Al-Khuri also published pieces written by journalist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (later editor of Le Figaro; 1808–90).²³ A year later when he was tempted to publish lengthy excerpts from Karr’s Les femmes (1853), which contained disparaging comments about women, al-Khuri refrained from doing so, explicitly citing his fear of his female readers’ adverse reactions.²⁴

These examples suggest that al-Khuri intuitively sensed that issues concerning women and marriage were of growing importance to his readers. In fact, the main theme of al-Khuri’s novella, Way…Idhan Lastu bi Ifranji (Alas…I Am Not a Foreigner; 1859–61), the earliest known attempt at writing modern Arabic fiction, was marriage. The protagonist, an Aleppo merchant affecting Western manners, wants to marry off his young educated daughter to an imposter posing as a foreigner, although she and her mother believe she should marry her Arab suitor. The story anticipated a theme which would eventually come to dominate Salim al-Bustani’s (1846–1884) social novels (serialized in the press) two decades later. Like many other Arab writers and intellectuals of the Nahda period, al-Khuri and al-Bustani insisted on distinguishing between modernization and Westernization. The modernization of Arab society was not to be a mere imitation of the West, but one in which certain (selected) ideas and institutions from the West would be used as a tool to advance their society. Al-Khuri’s (and al-Bustani’s) choice to work out this socio-political issue on gendered bodies clearly suggests that the status of women both within marriage and in other areas was a core issue requir...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Note on Transliteration
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. From Difa‘ al-Nisa’ to Mas’alat al-Nisa’ in Greater Syria: Readers and Writers Debate Women and Their Rights, 1858–1900
• 2. Love, Marriage and Social Reform in the Early Arabic Novel
• 3. Repaving the Path of Muru’a: Manly Virtue and the Emergence of a Modern Masculinity in Greater Syria
• 4. “Like a Planet without a Star”: The Glocalization of Domestic Discourse
• 5. The “Missing Link”? The Nahda Novelists and Intellectuals from Social Commentary to Political Critique and Activism
• 6. Beyond the Marriage Plot: Marriage, Sexuality and the Rise of “Outlaw Emotions” in Turn-of-the-century Novels
• Epilogue: Did Women Have a Nahda?
• Appendix 1: Illustrations from the Novel Asma
• Appendix 2: Anonymous Letter on Women’s Rights and Elections
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Back Cover